US 6,913,466 (Microsoft) on grooving and becoming a groover

From the abstract:

A system and methods are provided for training a trainee to analyze media, such as music, in order to recognize and assess the fundamental properties of any piece of media, such as a song or a segment of a song. The process includes an initial tutorial and a double grooving process.

From the background:

Classifying information that has subjectively perceived attributes or characteristics is difficult. When the information is one or more musical compositions, classification is complicated by the widely varying subjective perceptions of the musical compositions by different listeners. One listener may perceive a particular musical composition as "hauntingly beautiful" whereas another may perceive the same composition as "annoyingly twangy".

Accordingly, there is a need for an improved method of classifying information that is characterized by the convergence of subjective or perceptual analysis and DSP acoustical analysis criteria. With such a classification technique, it would be desirable to provide training to humans at the front end of the classification process in order to generate more uniform human classification of media. It would be further desirable to provide a system and method as a result of which an individual is trained to analyze media, such as songs, in order to recognize and assess the fundamental media properties of any piece of media. It would be still further desirable to utilize a playlist generating engine to dynamically produce playlist(s) suited to the above need for training individuals.


Here's the first claim:

A method for training a trainee to assign to a media entity at least one value corresponding to at least one fundamental property of a plurality of fundamental properties of the type of media entity via a computing device, comprising:

rendering definitional classification information to the trainee to educate the trainee as to the nature of said plurality of fundamental properties;

receiving by the computing devices at least one trainee-assigned value corresponding to said at least one fundamental property of the plurality of fundamental properties of the media entity after said rendering, said at least one trainee-assigned value equal in number to at least one expert-assigned value assigned to said at least one fundamental property of said plurality of fundamental properties of the media entity by at least one expert;

comparing by the computing device the at least one trainee-assigned value to the corresponding at least one expert-assigned value; and

determining based on said comparing a first group of said at least one fundamental property of the plurality of fundamental properties for which said trainee is qualified to code values for new media entities, wherein the media entities are one of song and song segments.

Detailed description:

The double grooving phase leverages the skills of the experts that defined the canonical set of classification terms to ensure that new listeners, even though exposed to the tutorial, appropriately recognize all fundamental musical properties. Thus, for specific song examples, a new listener matches results with the system experts within a degree of tolerance e.g., 90-95% accuracy. When a high enough degree of cross-listening consensus is reached, the new listener becomes a groover.


Grooving patent to Geoffrey R. Stanfield and Eric Bassman
US 6,913,466 issued July 5, 2005, filed August 21, 2001
CROSS REFERENCE TO RELATED APPLICATIONS

This application is related by subject matter to commonly assigned U.S. Pat. No. 6,545,209, issued on a Apr. 8, 2003, entitle "Music content Characteristic Identification and Matching" and to the following commonly assigned U.S. Patent Applications: U.S. patent application Ser. No. 09/900,230, filed on Jul. 6, 2001, entitled "System and Method for the Automatic Transmission of New, High Affinity Media;" U.S. patent application Ser. No. 09/934,071, filed Aug. 20, 2001, entitled "Method and System for Providing Adaptive Media Property Classification;" U.S. patent application Ser. No. 09/900,059, filed Jul. 6, 2001, entitled "System and Methods for Providing Automatic Classification of Media Entities According to Consonance Properties;" U.S. patent application Ser. No. 09/935,349, filed Aug. 21, 2001, entitled "Systems and Methods for Providing Automatic Classification of Media Entities According to Sonic Properties;" U.S. patent application Ser. No. 09/905,345, filed Jul. 13, 2001, entitled "System and Method for Providing Automatic Classification of Media Entities According to Tempo Properties;" U.S. patent application Ser. No. 09/904,465, filed Jul. 13, 2001, entitled "System and Methods for Automatic DSP Processing;" U.S. patent application Ser. No. 09/905,011, filed Jul. 13, 2001, entitled "System and Method for Dynamic Playlist of Media;" U.S. patent application Ser. No. 09/942,509, filed Aug. 29, 2001, entitled "System and Method for Providing Automatic Classification of Media Entities According to Melodic Movement Properties;" and U.S. patent application Ser. No. 09/928,004, filed Aug. 10, 2001, entitled "System and Method for Audio Fingerprinting," the contents of which are hereby incorporated into this present application in their entirely.